​There is no excuse genetically, physiologically or behaviorally that humans should not be classified in the family Hominidae along with Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Gorillas and Orangutans (as well as all the fossil hominids). Even if you are *not accepting of Evolutionary Theory, humans have no discernible separation from the Great Apes in regard to our criteria for classification at a family level.

Genetically, we have the basic similarities at a profile level primarily. Humans differ from chimpanzees and bonobos by 5-2% when compared by genetic profile (the exact same method we use to determine paternity in humans). And, while numbers can vary in regard to specific sections, humans are closest to chimps and bonobos in every potential comparison when in contrast to other organisms tested.Remarkably, this goes for the chimps and bonobos as well: We are their closest relatives, even when compared to the other African Apes.Our vitamin C gene is broken in the exact same place, across all of the haplorhines as well, a coincidence that cannot be reasonably explained outside common ancestry. And among the primates, including humans, our ERV's match us up as well.The underlying point for genetics is: Humans have direct relation to the other great apes, lesser apes, old and new world monkeys, tarsiers, lorises and lemurs respectively more than ANY other animal group.

Physiologically, we compare to chimpanzees and bonobos most closely as well. Their skeleton mostly closely resembles ours among living organisms, and they thrive with their habitual bipedality. Together we sport grasping hands, binocular vision, an identical dental formula (2123), low but present sexual dimorphism, altricial young with large braincases, similar gestational/rearing periods and flatter faces in comparison to the other mammals. Our young are born with the grasping reflex for holding mother's fur, and we still retain this today. We are covered with close to the same number of hair follicles, but our fur/hair is much thinner than theirs. Both of us share an omnivorous diet primarily plant based (with the advent of cereals for modern humans) but take meat at every opportunity.

And behaviorally the chimps and the bonobos occupy our own extremes: the warlike, patriarchal common chimps (pan troglodytes) versus the sexual, matriarchal bonobos (pan paniscus). They, like us, use tools and thrive in fission/fusion social groups.

There is no other group to place humans cladistically, nor would any sane taxonomist do so. We are share more with the apes in our family than some canids do with the dogs in their own.

Thus, I maintain there is NO excuse for attempting to give humans their own "Kind" even from a YEC perspective, if one is arguing for scientific validity. If you wish to claim it is so because God made humans unique, this is fine, but you cannot make an honest argument from a biologic perspective. Humans may differ in our spirituality, culture or success, but this is of no consequence to my claim: the anatomy speaks for itself.

edit: a more clear addition: even when disregarding genetics, an honest cladist would still classify humans as hominids.

Limestone 101Most limestone is made of the skeletons and shells of trillions upon trillions of marine microorganisms. Deposits can be hundreds or even thousands of meters thick. Approximately 1.5 x 1015 grams of calcium carbonate get deposited on the ocean floor annually [Poldervaart, 1955]. A deposition rate ten times as high for 5000 years before the Flood would still only account for less than 0.02% of limestone deposits.10% of ALL sedimentary rock is limestone... of which most is marine. Of the limestone that is NOT, the majority of that is from lakes and ALSO involves microfossils. The only kind that doesn't, is not referred to as limestone under scientific terms, and is formed in hot springs and in cave systems. Of the limestone bands that we have, every one I know of involves: microfossilsSo to summarize so far: Most rock is sedimentary rock. Of that sedimentary rock, 10% is limestone, and of that 10%, the majority is marine in nature. Marine limestone, to my knowledge, always contains microfossils and thus in thebest **case scenario (warm, calm waters) will have a depostion rate of 1.5 X 10******15, far too slow to explain the layers we currently have (hundreds to thousands of meters thick).There are of course, additional problems regarding limestone.

Limestone takes time to form into solid rock, even today. Thus, if all of it were deposited in a single year, the result would NOT be the great, jagged cliffsides of Dover and the Grand Canyon, but gentle sloping. This is due to limestone's slow hardening, which would not be solid by the time the Great Paleolake burst and carved the Grand Canyon as seen in Flood Geology to create said cliffs. Instead, the enormous limestone deposits would slouch pitifully under their own soggy weight until, like a child's paper mache project, they harden.

Limestone has a strange solubility trend. It is more soluble (dissolves more readily) in cold water. If the Fountains of the Deep were cold, all the lime should be in a single layer on top of all the rest, precipitating out as the water warmed. If the Fountains of the Deep were hot, than all limestone should be near the bottom in a large band, having not been taken up by the surrounding water. Either way, limestone cannot be interspersed between clay, silt and sand in these models.

Limestone is highly soluble in water as it is, so large bands of limestone cannot be explained by currents carrying deposits from elsewhere either.

Limestone from slow-growing coral and fast-growing coral can be differentiated. As such, enormous coral reef colonies (6000+ years old) in existence currently, whose foundations are their calcified ancestors, cannot be explained away as fast-growing coral which proliferated after the flood.

This paper lists many statistics comparing Calcite (Grand Canyon Redwall) and Aragonite ("Modern Lime Muds") in an effort to contrast them in such a way that suggests flood geology to be feasible.These comparisons are somewhat trivial, as they have nothing to do with the claim the article ends with:"There is ample evidence to indicate that the thick Canyon limestones were not formed as today’s lime muds are, by the ‘gentle rain of carbonates’ over long time-spans, but instead were formed by the transport of sediments by currents of flowing water."Interesting, but where are the sources?Because I can provide a source by four Christian geologists definitively remarking the opposite:"No limestone has ever been documented to form from floodwater-either in a laboratory or from field obervations- not even in floods as massive as those forming the Channeled Scablands in Washington State. Quite simply, limestone is one type of rock that takes a long time to be deposited- much, much longer than the time span of a flood."Grand Canyon, Monument to an Ancient Earth (Hill, Davidson, Helble, Ranney)Furthermore, their example of how "Modern Lime Muds" form is also brazenly incorrect. Calcite Limestone is forming right now, as you read this:"One of these areas is the Bahamas Platform, located in the Atlantic Ocean about 100 miles southeast of southern Florida (see satellite image). There, abundant corals, shellfish, algae, and other organisms produce vast amounts of calcium carbonate skeletal debris that completely blankets the platform. This is producing an extensive limestone deposit."How do they think we got a precipitation rate in the first place?

Similar to Schwietzer's work, the flume experiment at Indiana University has been grossly taken out of context. The experiment proved that sediments of a particular type can be deposited in moving water of a given velocity, created bedload floccules.The Creationist idea then, is that if mudstone can be deposited in rapidly moving water, why not limestone?For one, mudstone is classified as entirely unique to limestone, given the former is a "Mudrock" and the latter is of "Biochemical Origin". This is akin to saying because Macaws have long lifespans, so do sparrows.They behave entirely unique to one another.But let's say for arguments sake, they behave exactly the same. Floccules are identifiable formations, and as such, all sedimentary rock should be littered with them. But they aren't.

Parker can be quoted in his book with some opinions on limestone. Originally, this bit was on the AiG website, but I suppose they had the good sense to take it down for reasons that are about to become evident:“Like most Americans, I was mis-taught in grade school that it takes millions of years and tremendous heat and pressure to turn sediments (like sand, lime, or clay) into rock (like sandstone, limestone, or shale). We all know better. Concrete is just artificial rock. Cement companies crush rock, separate the cementing minerals and large stones, and then sell it to you. You add water to produce the chemical reaction (curing, not drying), and rock forms again—easily, naturally, and quickly, right before your very eyes. Indeed, you can make rock as a geology lab exercise, without using volcanic heat and pressure or waiting millions of years for the results. Time, heat, and pressure can and do alter the properties of rock (including “Flood rock”), but the initial formation of most rocks, like the setting of concrete, is quite rapid.”This is misleading. As already covered, limestone forms as a result of calcium carbonate, a compound that exists primarily in microscopic marine organisms, accumulating over long periods of time. For this to happen, these organisms must die and drift to the bottom of the sea. As we also already covered, limestone requires calm, warm waters to precipitate out. The Flood would have been anything but. Finally, let us assume for a moment that hypothetically limestone could be laid down during the flood. How would we explain vast swathes of limestone underneath existing rock layers?This fossil formation (all I could find on AiG regarding anything about limestone when I was initially searching) simply rebuffs and avoids the issue. It goes so far as to take concrete, a manmade use of the process of hydration, to explain the natural processes of three separate and vastly different rocks forming. Hydration requires dry material. So why is there thick lime on the bottom of all oceans if there was a global flood? If there is evidence supporting fast settling or lay down of these rocks, why not mention it? Because as covered above, no such example currently exists.

In this article, ICR argues that because the minerals which make up limestone can form quickly, that means limestone can form quickly. No mention of deposition though, which is the entire issue for flood geology. Or how geologists can tell if limestone is organic (the vast majority) or inorganic (typically relegated to cave formations) and the organic kind requires... well... dead microorganisms which can not "form quickly".Aside from all that, does this argument sound familiar?"If the parts can form for something, their final product can form!"Is this not the exact argument that YEC's so consistently rail against... for abiogenesis? Considering the amino acids necessary for life have been proven to form naturally?Just food for thought.

TL;DR: Limestone's precipitation rate is far too slow for to give all the required layers for the Global Flood. In addition, limestone requires calm, warm water, and there is no current flood model to offer an explanation for why such fine particled minerals appear in layers between coarse sands and silts.

​Today's subject is that of the one of the most basal organisms on our planet, and it is capable on it's own of disrupting the possibility of a global flood as well as a 6000 year old Earth. It also validates Evolutionary Theory and the currently listed mass extinctions.It may be a simple cnidarian, but we'll explore just how damaging this animal is to a literalist interpretation of the Bible.Part 1: The Crash Course on CoralsCorals are marine invertebrates of the phylum Cnidaria. They are sessile, meaning they lack a means of locomotion, and individual corals (polyps) form coral groups known as colonies, whose polyps are thus genetically identical. They reproduce primarily sexually though, and coral colonies will release gametes into open water simultaneously according to the lunar cycle.As such, coral reefs are made of many coral colonies which many vary on species, but all of which grow upwards and outwards asexually. In the case of stony coral (as opposed to the other type, soft coral) their immense skeleton is made of calcium carbonate in the form of calcite or aragonite (both polymorphs of limestone).Coral reefs are interesting though, due to their nature of growth. As coral reefs proliferate, coral groups die and are replaced by new polyps. This leads to a continuous growth of new coral colonies on the dead skeletons of their colonial fore-bearers.In fact, the largest reefs on our planet are living coral groups on thousands of years of dead coral groups including the Great Barrier Reef.The coral type we are going to investigate here is that of large stony corals (scleractinian) which build shallow-water coral reefs, including fringing reefs, barrier reefs and atolls; the majority of which occur in tropical and subtropical seas. This is because these particular corals are not only incredibly common, but they are of interest thanks to their abysmally slow growth rate adding an average of 0.2-1.0 inches per year to the overall height of the reef.According to this same source corals have ideal growing conditions that apply generally across the board: " Coral reefs grow best in warm water (70–85° F or 21–29° C). Corals prefer clear and shallow water, where lots of sunlight filters through to their symbiotic algae. It is possible to find corals at depths of up to 300 feet (91 meters), but reef-building corals grow poorly below 60–90 feet (18–27 meters). Corals need salt water to survive, so they grow poorly near river openings or coastal areas with excessive runoff."All of the following will be important to remember and refer to for the following analysis.Part 2: A History of CoralsGeologically, we first see corals appear in Cambrian rock, although their record really begins to bloom in the Ordovician. Here we see the rise of the incredibly prolific Rugose Corals.They are represented heavily in the Thorton Reef in Illinois at the Silurian Racine Formation, where ancient reef cavities are filled with thick oil, and layering is interspersed. The Devonian Tract in Alberta is similar.These corals no longer exist today, as they were wiped out in the Permian, leaving an enormous void in the fossil record. But shortly after in the Triassic the scleractinian corals arrive on the scene, and become the dominant corals we see today.This is important: Prior to the extinction of the Rugose corals, we never see a scleractinian specimen in the fossil record. It isn't until the rugose niche opens up that the scleractinians can diversify into their spots. This is not to say that scleractians did not exist before the Triassic, but rather, they were represented by much fewer species due to competition with the rugose corals. In fact, current molecular data suggests that scleractinians were out and about deep in the Paleozoic, but their radiation was choked by the sheer success of the rugose species.The shoe would be on the other foot though, as the anoxic conditions that obliterated the rugose corals could not squelch the scleractinians, who had been quietly subsisting in the background. They would explode in diversity in the Mid-Triassic once a symbiotic relationship with algae was developed.Part 3: Corals Confound CreationistsSo hopefully you're already seeing the problems, but let's point them out and dive in a bit more.Rugose Coral Reefs bust up a Global Flood AND a Young EarthFlood Geology generally has the first layer of the flood deposits as that which overlays the basement granite of our planet, or layers corresponding to the Pre-Cambrian. In the context of the Grand Canyon, this would be the Grand Canyon Supergroup as the first.Now, as we mentioned above, Thorton Reef is a Silurian Reef, and the Silurian begins some 443 MYA. This is certainly smack-dab in the middle of the Flood Layers.Thorton Reef is a remarkably intact reef, with incredibly preserved brittle coral heads, crinoid fossils and other fragile organisms. But it is located in a layer that would have been deposited in the very heat of what is considered by Creationists as the most powerful natural disaster of all time.But somehow we are expected to accept an enormous global flood that instantly buried some organisms, and tore other apart (depending on the state of the fossil examined), raged for months without burying an enormous reef, and then, midway through, covered it instantly without it's earthshaking power obliterating all the fragile bits.The Rugose corals too are slow growers and make up an enormous tract of land in the Devonian formation in Alberta: "...the Upper Devonian Swan Hills Formation of the Beaverhill Lake Group. Kaybob reef is a flat north-south elongate lens, 250 ft thick, 11 mi long, and 3 mi wide, built on the Slave Point Formation, a widespread platform carbonate."It is far too large to have formed in less than 3000 years from Creation to the Flood, even using the most liberal Creation date by YEC's of 10,000 years.Add to this the trouble of the flood wiping out all corals, due to their requirements clear shallow water and low turbidity (rugose corals are shown to require these as well, given the shaping of the Thornton Reef) and all current reefs then having a maximum age of 4319 years (presuming the flood was in 2300 BCE)And Modern Corals do the Same.Take the Enewetok atoll. This atoll was cored many decades ago, and indicated that it is an enormous coral reef growing on volcanic rock. As the volcanic rock sunk (as some do) the coral was forced to grow upwards in order to maintain proper conditions. This is similar to how trees grow towards sunlight. And it created a massive slab of coral around 1380 meters thick, nearly a mile. The deepest parts were so old, that the aragonite skeletons of the coral were geochemically converted to dolomite.Let's give Creationists the best possible scenario and assume all these corals are growing at the fastest known coral growth rate of 8 inches per year. To be clear, we know that these corals abide by the far more common growth rate of 0.1-1.0 inches per year, but we're being generous.A depth of 4540.8 feet X 12 inches / 8 inches per year yields an age of 6811.2 years. nearly 3000 years too old to have begun growing before the flood, and using the most generous possible growth rate, applied to corals who definitively do not grow that quickly.The more realistic math using these species actual growth rates gives the atoll a minimum age of 138,000 years old, and that is still eliminating any erosional events in the core sample.Coral Reefs line Enewetok or the Great Barrier Reef are ignored though, or spun to fit the narrative as in this link, where Old Earth Ministries busts YEC authors Snelling and Reed for misrepresentation, or, dishonesty.Sometimes in an effort to explain this, Creationists invoke that the ancient coral colonies such as Thorton did not grow in one place, but are a result of many colonies that grew in separate places and were transported to a new location by the current, and subsequently buried.Of course this brings us right back around to the problem of the fragile corals and other organisms, as well as the orientation of the reef itself. If it were carried by strong currents and placed elsewhere it should be heavy-side-down. But the heavy part of the reef, the enormous upward growth, is facing upward as it would if it had never been moved.And so, Creationists are left with either invoking coral growth faster than ever before seen (which is not empirical) or suggesting physics defying currents, which have also never been seen.Conclusion/TL;DRCorals are incredible animals whose appearance, diversification and persistence in the fossil record aligns not with sudden Creation but with Evolutionary Theory given the succession of Rugose corals by Scleractinians. Additionally, their growth rates even at their most generous preclude the traditional YEC timeline both in modern reefs and ancient reefs. This leaves Creationists dealing with the coral issue by ignoring it or invoking never-before-seen physics and biologic concepts.

As usual, the primary contender rising up and blocking Young Earth Creationism as a hypothesis with legitimacy is the dynamic duo of Geology and Paleontology.Which is why today we're discussing Fossil Graveyards, a type of Paleontologic formation frequently used by "Flood Geologists" in favor of Global Cataclysmic Flood. As we will see in the following post, this could not be further from the truth: the unique type of death assembly so cherished by those in favor of a Global Noachian Deluge directly precludes the event's existence.Let's dive in!Part 1: Taphonomy and The Types of Fossil GraveyardTaphonomy is a field in Paleontology that concerns itself with how things die. More specifically, the factors and events leading up to death (habitat and climate), burial/lack thereof (postmortem transport, decay, local scavengers) and fossilization processes (diagenesis and pressure).Naturally then, this science is really quite important to the realm of Paleontology and Geology (the latter insofar as the two fields can and do tend to inform one another).But so frequently "Flood Geologists" will write on the subject as though mainstream Paleontologists and Geologists are completely ignorant of the processes that impact the preservation of life, while in the same breath providing hefty evidence they themselves don't know the first thing about it:"When we see fossilization world-wide, when we note that the water is the agency that has presented the conditions for fossilization, then we must conclude that there was a world-wide water cataclysm in the past"This is Randy Wysong, a YEC Veterinarian and Flood Geology Advocate. Not, mind you, a Geologist or a Paleontologist. If he were, he would notice the absolutely innumerable examples of arid fossilization, sometimes known as desiccation. Or perhaps the preservation seen through freezing and encased in peat bogs and amber? Or perhaps the numerous trace fossils seen in gentle seafloor footprints. But Wysong continues:"The geological column is not a record of the coming of life, it is a record of it's going, it's departure, it's demise. The scientific community is not naive to this evidence. Some simply shelf it or ignore it to maintain the doctrine of uniformitarianism."This prevailing attitude of "Flood Geology" is persistent among YEC's, interpreting nearly every fossil find dated from the Cambrian to the Cretaceous as a result of the Flood. Gnawed-on bones of a long dead cerotopsian or the tell-tale-teeth-marks of cannibalistic theropods must be uniformly reinterpreted to reflect an answer already in mind: a rapid death and burial by a catastrophic flood some 2000-4000 years ago.This is all due to a lack of understanding, education or pure dismissal of Taphonomy. Of course, I imagine they would trust the same principles applied to a crime scene.There are Three Types of Fossil Graveyard, but all are used to make the same point by "Flood Geologists", that point being thus: The Flood buried these organisms.If the organisms are fragile and easily destroyed by rough water, the flood was so immensely fast and catastrophic it instantly buried these creatures, even as to preserve their finer features.If the organisms are jumbled in a mass and dis-articulated, well, the flood did that too: no truly natural process can explain the power with which these organisms were torn to shreds.You're probably wondering, can it be both? And as we will prove here in a moment: No. No it actually cannot be both. It can only be either, and only on a small scale.Fossil Graveyards come in three varieties:- Localized Natural Traps which include tar pits, caves, fissures and dried up watering holes. These are the very local, and they are typically not the result of a "one time event".- Widespread Regional Accumulations are a result of climate or habitat and include lagoons, river deltas and steppe environments. These appear to map patterns in local change, such as an ephemeral lake or the repeated massing of frozen organisms in the cold.- Truly Catastrophic, but Spatially-Restricted Death Assemblages occur when there is a massive impact on a moderately sized area. Volcanic Eruptions, Landslide and yes, Floods are included in this.But "Flood Geologists" appear to ignore the distinction, and lump ALL the categories into the big arching title: Fossil Graveyards. This is usually accompanied with the notion that these events are inexplicable under modern, natural conditions.Part 2: Why Ignoring the Distinction is Problematic to the YEC CauseLet's reexamine the first category: Localized Natural Traps.These have occurred throughout history, and are occurring today under very routine circumstances. Gary Haynes studied African Elephants in Zimbabwe and recorded enormous sites of pachyderm death and subsequent partial or total burial around watering holes. This is because African Elephants are quite intelligent, and dig primitive "wells" around dried lakes and ponds in pursuit of a drink. Many die as the water is present, but not abundant and creates mud-traps which the elephants cannot escape from.There is a similar assemblage in Hot Springs Mammoth Site in South Dakota, a dried lake with over 40 mammoth skeletons.Taphonomy is taking the former and realizing is is quite relevant to the latter.Famous proponents of "Flood Geology" Whitcomb and Morris took this idea and ran with it in the opposite direction when examining the La Brea Tar Pits, another localized natural trap.It does not escape me that many modern proponents of the flood suggest a proto-pachyderm on the ark with mammoths and mastodons proliferating in hyper-evolutionary circumstances afterward. But this is a point being made against the due diligence of the very founders of modern Flood Geology."One might, for example, discuss at length the marvels as the La Brea Pits in Los Angeles, which have yielded tens of thousands of specimens of all kinds of living and extinct animals (each of which by the unbelievable uniformitarian explanation, fell into this sticky graveyard by accident one at a time)."Morris and Whicomb of course neglect to mention the lack of anything outside the proposed secular assemblage of ecology at the time (no pterosaurs or theropods are in the pits, for example).And for those proclaiming this is not problematic for the modern "Flood Geology" which posits this tar pit is post-flood, well, that's not really going to work either. The specimens are radiometrically dated as 10,000 to 50,000 years old depending on the species (and radiometric dating has yet to be proven even slightly incorrect consistently) and the dark color of the bones found in these pits is due to long term soaking by the tar.Never mind the tar is gilsonite and crude oil... much of which formed after immense pressure and time from the Carboniferous to now. Proponents of the Flood already skirt Noah's use of tar to waterproof the boat by invoking the idea the Earth was created with the tar already formed. But what then, of La Brea? A Post-Flood Formation?Localized Natural Traps are decidedly not catastrophic, and thus not a result of the Flood.What about Widespread Regional Accumulations, the second category?Well they aren't really helpful to "Flood Geologists" either are they, given they reflect the changes across regions, not the world.Take Solnhofen Germany, a famous fossil site covering 45 by 25 miles and 100-300 feet thick. It consists of fine-grained deposits, and incredibly well preserved organisms (even the ink sacs of squids) as well as toothed birds and the membranous wings of ancient pterosaurs.So what do we know from the taphonomy? Well, plant life indicates this was an arid area and the fine grain size (1-3 microns) restricts the area to warm and quiet waters so the present lime particles can settle out given their precipitation rate of 1.5 X 1015. Preserved trackways of gently moving horseshoes crabs are also present, indicating very little current. But the key is the presence of coccolithiphorid algae remains, suggesting toxicity existed in the bottom layers thanks to algal blooms and subsequent eutrophic conditions.None of this is consistent with a global flood. And yet, the flood is invoked for the preservation of those fine feathers and wings, despite the fact that toxic lakes do the same thing to our organisms today.The Green River formation is equally problematic. It's assemblages reflect another ecosystem within the secular restraints something Whitcomb and Morris ignore in their book "Fishing for Fossils" instead opting to say:"it is not easy to imagine any kind of "uniform" process by which this conglomeration of modern and extinct fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals, insects and plants could have been piled together and preserved for posterity."Except... all the forms were freshwater and appropriate for their time. There were no: trilobites, crinoids, mammoths, saltwater fish, dunkleosteans, smilodons, lobsters, dinosaurs or pterosaurs present.And so, in come the modern FG's with the idea that this too, is a post flood deposit.But... it's 2500 feet thick and 160 miles long by 60 miles wide with marls (fine grained mineral similar to lime). And one has 4000 odd years if working with a 6000 year time scale. With that deposition rate, does this at all sound possible?The Morrison formation and Florissant formation present similar issues.As is the Karoo Formation.And that leaves the Truly Catastrophic, but Spatially-Restricted Death Assemblages.The problem should be immediately noticeable in the name: these are specially restricted, and invariably tied to local events.Take the Belmont Chert near Newcastle Australia. YEC buff Andrew Snelling loves to tout this area as evidence for the Flood, but a closer look (using our taphonomy knowledge) tells a different story. The Chert, 2.5 feet thick, is around 6 miles long by 1 mile wide and it is chock full of insects. Mostly their isolated wings, but enough has been preserved we now have identified 145 species. But there are ash layers, and coal seams present above and below the chert. And the fauna is limited to the insects and some off fish scales, crustaceans and plant debris. This screams local catastrophe, not global flood.Or the Ashfall Beds of Nebraska which show an impressive assemblage of Miocene mammals entombed in ash. Curiously, there is nary a trilobite present.Finally the Lompoc Ditomite Layers which present an enormous death assemblage of pelagic (open water) fish... and enough algae fossils to choke out anything nearby with their algal bloom anoxia.Any of the Global Extinctions will do as well.None of these shout to a global flood, but rather, the assemblages are forced into a jigsaw puzzle they simply do not fit to.Part 3: Conclusion and TL;DRThe Fossil Graveyards so often sourced by Flood supporters are not what they seem. They are rich beds of history whose true obituaries lie in their microfossils, ecologic assembly, death poses, and geology. And there isn't a single Fossil Graveyard, of any kind, that points to a global flood. The reason for this, is it is simply impossible given the number of Graveyards that point to the very opposite: local or regional events. Sometimes those events can snowball into mass extinctions sure, but one flood assembly points to a local flood. To have a Global Flood, well...All the Graveyards would scream it, from their jumbled and disarticulated fossils to their distinct lack of arid conditions, anoxia or ashfall.But that, is simply not what we see.

​​Let's talk about the major extinctions, shall we? Because they are quite problematic if you are a Young Earth Creationist.In conventional science, there are typically 5 recognized Mass Extinction events. Extinction events can be defined as "widespread and rapid decrease in the biodiversity on Earth. Such an event is identified by a sharp change in the diversity and abundance of multicellular organisms. It occurs when the rate of extinction increases with respect to the rate of speciation." (Wikipedia, Extinction Event)These five extinctions events are written, saturnine, in the rocks. We can imagine a rich fossil shelf like the Burges Shale, immediately followed by a barren strip of sparse layering as biodiversity has plummeted. This is of course, what we find. Five times, actually, and each with additional identifiers that tell us part of the story of "what happened" to these organisms and their formerly flourishing ecosystems.Now, many Creationists have differing opinions on many different things. But one connecting factor (to my knowledge, a universal one in this ideology) is that all of the rock layers and fossils above the Vishnu Schist (the lowest granite layer of the Grand Canyon) were deposited by the global Noachian Deluge which occurred somewhere between 4000 BCE and 2000 BCE in approximately one year's time.(depending on the used YEC chronology).What can be inferred then, is that the cause of death of nearly every fossil we find is impact from the wall of water or drowning.But the nature of how layers are deposited and the taphonomy behind the deaths of these organisms present issues, especially in the light of those found in death assemblages during mass extinction events.Let's tackle the glaring issues first.The Extinction Events: An Overview1)Ordovician-Silurian444 mya, approx. 86% species lost.Likely cause: a short, severe ice age that lowered sea levels, possibly triggered by the uplift of the Appalachians. The newly exposed silicate rock sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere, chilling the planet.How do we know this?: Isotope analysis of Oxygen in brachiopods and conodonts show us that this period experienced a serious cooling event! It turns out Isotopes can reveal climate. Similar to runaway greenhouse effects, this "mini" Ice Age entered into a feedback loop as more exposed silicate cooled the planet, freezing more water and exposing more silicate.YEC Problems: Isotope analysis alone is problematic for YEC site Answers in Genesis, which proposes a single Ice Age post-Flood. But logistically this is a problem for all YEC's. The organisms that died in the Ordovician Extinction littered the seafloor as they perished, supposedly representing the first to die in the Noachian Deluge en masse. But their own shell's isotopes indicate they died due to the ice that was beginning to creep down from the poles.Walt Brown, YEC producer of the Hydroplate Hypothesis, invokes supercritical fluids to explain the deposition of so many layers of rock. Supercritical fluids occur at HIGH temeratures, not the more chilled waters the millions upon millions of sordid shells indicate.Added is the obvious looming problem of "ecologic sorting". If habitat is to blame for the layering of the fossil record, why do we find ANY seafloor dwellers fossilized past this point? Why are the cetaceans and mosasaurs and MAJORITY of trilobites so much higher in the record?2)Devonian-Carboniferous375 million years ago, 75% of species lost.Likely cause: Colonization of land by plants allows roots to stir up the earth, releasing nutrients into the ocean. This might have triggered algal blooms which sucked oxygen out of the water, suffocating bottom dwellers like the trilobites.How do we this?: So vascular plants have risen to the land and doomed their distant eukaryotic brethren in the sea (including the poor trilobites). Sapping the oxygen from the sea, they created mass anoxia which can be seen int eh chemical analysis of laminated black shale and in the lack of free O2 in the sediment.YEC Problems: Anoxia is usually caused by algal blooms (due to eutrophic conditions) of organic-walled plankton and the like. Anoxic death in marine organisms is resultant from the lack of O2 in the water. There is no means by which to suggest that a flood can correlate or cause Anoxic Conditions, as the rough seas would discourage algal growth and destroy any land plants. The marine organisms should show cause of death linked to blunt force or burial, and the entire ocean would certainly not become anoxic in the conditions described in Genesis 6-7.3)End of Permian “The Great Dying”251 million years ago, 96% of species lost.Likely cause: A perfect storm of natural catastrophes. A cataclysmic eruption near Siberia blasted CO2 into the atmosphere. Methanogenic bacteria responded by belching out methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Global temperatures surged while oceans acidified and stagnated, belching poisonous hydrogen sulfide. “It set life back 300 million years,” Rocks after this period record no coral reefs or coal deposits.How do we Know This?: Each of the factors are documented in the fossils and the rock and are abjectly not copacetic with a global deluge as the cause. First is the magma/igneous residue from the eruption of the Siberian Traps. We can track this also through the rapid introduction of isotopically light carbon found in the marine system. Second, we see the anoxia again. And finally is the fact that after these two events subside geochemically the biodiversity in the fossil record is absolutely decimated. Again, no ancient coral.YEC Problems: Here we also see the death of the majority of the Synapsids, Dicynodonts, Pelycosaurs etc. These animals occupied the same niches the dinosaurs would come to takeover, meaning their habitats are the same and the fossils are in the same location but separated by geologic time. Some of these guys outwieghed some of the dinosaurs. So why are they so deep below them in the sediment? Hydrologic sorting cannot explain why a tyrannosaur would be above a gorgonopsid, as the former SHOULD sink below if they are indeed killed at the same time. And as I mentioned, their habitats are nearly identical, so Ecologic sorting cannot either.Equally as problematic is the notion of the anoxia (again) and the severe volcanism. You see, the noxious output by the Siberian Traps encouraged methanogenic bacteria to flourish. Today, modern methanophiles live in harsh conditions such as under the permafrost or in the soil of arid deserts.They do NOT thrive in floodwaters, or in a global inundation.The coral are problematic as well. After this geochemical marker in time, they dissapear and the taxa which are killed off never make a reappearance. However, they are succeeded in the SAME habitats by different coral (soft corals) which survived the Permian Event thanks to the lack of their calcareous parts. So the Flood Geologist must come up with a hydrologic sorting method which can model why the waters patterned the corals as such, since no modern floodwaters have been observed sorting SOME organisms by size/weight/habitat, and not others.4) End of Triassic200 million years ago, 80% of species lost.Likely cause: As of 2017, Volcanism is suggested, but this is a more contended issue. The disappearance of 80% of known life in the fossil record is abrupt and left few clues, but a 2017 paper examines one of the larger ones: Mercury.How do we Know This?: Mercury Levels! These coincide with enormous volcanic events, suggesting another potential anoxic event.YEC Problems: You may be noticing a pattern of anoxia here. Before you entertain the hypothesis that the flood triggered this O2 sap somehow and attribute it as another unifying Flood condition, allow me to present an issue. The Geological history of Oxygen on the planet shows fluctuations. The most damning to this particular idea is the fact that insects enjoyed insanely high O2 numbers in the Carboniferous... which is seated between two periods of mass anoxia.The volcanistic nature of the End-Triassic is problematic due to the ash residue, which is terrestrial in nature. Meaning the volcanoes were not acting up underwater, but belching cinders into the air.5) Cretaceous-Cenozoic66 million years ago, 76% of all species lost.Likely cause: Impact event that left the ) Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico. Killed all the dinosaurs, and all tetrapods over 55 lbs.How do we know This?: The Iridium Layer! Iridium is an element that is supremely rare on Earth, but notably common in meteors and asteroids. There is a global band of this element found at the K-T boundary, the same layer that the Chixulub crater is found in. This layer is quite unique, as it represents a fuzzy border between the time of the dinosaurs and the time after them. This has always been the prevailing theory, but a recent hubub has been made over supposed further confirmation thanks to a new dig site.YEC Problems: The nature of meteorite impacts is well known. We can tell by the size of a crater how large the object was, how fast it was going and it's composition. The crater at Chixulub is not indicative of a meteor which would have to penetrate sea levels higher than the Himalayas.There are arguments of course that the Himalayas are a result of the flood and perhaps the waters were lower at the time of the Chixulub impact. The question then becomes something a bit more problematic.The layers that make up the Jurassic and Cretaceous would have been laid down late in the Flood. This means The Chixulub impact was also late during the flood. Since we find the Jurassic dino fossils right underneath the Iridium Anomaly, we now face some issues. If the dinosaurs died this late in the flood, what did they eat while swimming for nearly a year? What about the dinosaurs not capable of swimming (looking at you carnotaurus)? if they were dead and simply not deposited yet, why are they all articulated together? Submergence in water lends a body to breakdown and the bones would be separately buried, not in a death-pose.Thus the dead dinos must have been terrestrial at the time of death. This final issue on the last extinction alone precludes the Global flood based solely on principles of Taphonomy, let alone in the light of everything else.Summary + ClosingWhile these events clearly create enormous problems for a Global Flood, little was said specifically on the Young Earth Nature. I am hopeful that seeing these events in tandem makes it clear that they could not have all occurred in 6000-10000 years simply due to the required ecologic recovery time. Additionally is the simple argument of radiometric datingon the rocks formed during these time periods.The Mass Extinctions are incredibly displays of the fickle nature of our world. They rely on of an often chance event that spirals out of control while the hapless denizens of the planet struggle to survive. It is AFTER these horrific cataclysms that we see the biggest events of radiative evolution occur, proving that most relentless disasters till the soil for forms of life great and small to take Life's grand stage.TL;DR: Various lines of evidence provide a basis for five mass extinctions, the natures of which preclude a global deluge from having occurred at that time geochemically and taphonomically.

​Quite a bit rests on the accuracy of Radiometric Dating in the world of Young Earth Creationism and Flood Geology. This practice taken at face value says blatantly that their ideas of the antiquity of the Earth and the diversification of life are supremely incorrect, full stop. Radiometric Dating confirms that the Earth is some 4.8 billion years old and that transitional forms are separated by vast swatches of time.​So it shouldn't be surprising that these belief systems go to great lengths to reject radiometric dating as a field (except in the instances when it corroborates biblical history). I aim to cover the many aspects of their claims and faults with the process of dating rocks and fossils, as well as to explain why radiometric dating makes the argument of "Evolution vs Creation (six days)" and open and shut case.​It is fairly well known in this sub that I am a Theistic Evolutionist. I say this because the primary source I am using for this post is "The Bible, Rocks and Time" a book written by religious geologists Davis Young and Ralph Stearley who accept the allegorical nature of Genesis and argue passionately for the ancient age of the Earth. I recommend it highly for anyone (secular or otherwise) with an interest in geology.​

Radiometric Dating: An Overview

Radiometric dating is not subjective in any sense. It is simply a method of determining precise dates based on the Physics principle that as time passes atoms of a particular chemical element will spontaneously change into atoms of a different chemical element. This is a firm law in physics: The Radioactive Decay Law. It additionally covers the nature of decay constants and half-lifes and indicates that to our current knowledge: decay rates do not change in meaningful ways in nature on our planet.Radiometric Dating can be done in a variety of ways and usually involves decay types: beta decay, alpha decay and electron capture.

YEC attempts to Discredit Radiometric Decay Rates.

The RATE team (an Institute for Creation Research group) was deployed specifically to refute this. And what they found is that decay rates cannot be changed in meaningful ways (that is, significant enough to propose 6000 years) on our planet.That RATE group has been discontinued since 2005, and in their book on their findings the group of YEC scientists “admit that a young-earth position cannot be reconciled with the scientific data without assuming that exotic solutions will be discovered in the future. No known thermodynamic process could account for the required rate of heat removal nor is there any known way to protect organisms from radiation damage.”Carl Wieland of AiG (Answers in Genesis, a YEC site) had this to say as well: " When physicist Dr Russell Humphreys was still at Sandia National Laboratories (he now works full-time for ICR), he and Dr John Baumgardner (still with Los Alamos National Laboratory) were both convinced that they knew the direction in which to look for the definitive answer to the radiometric dating puzzle. [new paragraph] Others had tried—and for some, the search went on for a while in the early RATE days—to find the answer in geological processes. But Drs Humphreys and Baumgardner realized that there were too many independent lines of evidence (the variety of elements used in "standard" radioisotope dating, mature uranium radiohalos, fission track dating and more) that indicated that huge amounts of radioactive decay had actually taken place. It would be hard to imagine that geologic processes could explain all these. Rather, there was likely to be a single, unifying answer that concerned the nuclear decay processes themselves"In all the history of radiometric dating, the maximum change in decay in a laboratory environment was 1.5% in 1999 by altering environmental conditions chemically. To date, no evidence for perturbation in the decay constant of any geologically important radioactive isotope has been found.This has left a large problem for YEC's. Humphreys of the RATE team makes a tacit admission that the induced accelerated decay that has been experimentally performed (in elements not related to radiometric dating mind you) are "minuscule compared to the million-fold or greater acceleration of decay rates which is required by the evidence for a young Earth". He then suggests "we should not be surprised if we find evidence that God has supernaturally intervened".So what we have here is the admission that without supernatural intervention the Earth's age appears to be ancient.

The Heat Problem for Accelerated Decay

Let us for a moment grant Young Earth Creationism accelerated decay. What would happen if we were to compress 4.8 billion years of radioactive decay into 6000 years?A Tufts University Geologist did the mathAt the time of Adam and Eve according to YECs, the surface of the Earth would be 70,000 degrees C for every square kilometer. At the time of Jesus's birth, assuming a generous geothermal gradient we would be at 400 degrees C for every square kilometer.​

Woodmorappe (YEC) and "Fallacies"

John Woodmorappe has given some input on Radiometric Dating as well (although he does openly admit he doesn't at present have an answer for the ancient Bristlecone Pines). He has three fallacies which he uses to "combat" Radiometric dating methods. Let's review his fallacies here.A) CDMBN or "Credit Dating methods for frequent success, but Blame Nature for failures"Woodmorappe seems to have this idea that geology is constant and without anomaly. He sees thousands upon thousands of correct and corroborated dates (through multiple methods) each year, but if a single date is strange and geologists remark that it may be a new phenomena it's suddenly fallacious. This is precisely what happens in Evolutionary Theory or Paleontology when a date changes. It's only okay in non-origin related science for change to occur.B) ATM or "Appeal to Marginalization"Woodmorappe essentially repeats the first "fallacy" and notes that blaming anomalous circumstances is a cop out of sorts. He points to Rb-Sr dating (despite that this method has been largely abandoned for methods with less room for error, for example, SHRIMP for isotope analysis). He completely disregards the very nature of geology: to understand anomalies. Not to mention once anomalies are understood and accounted for, the margin or error shrinks.C) ATT or "Appeal to Technicalities"Human error is not a factor in Woodmorappe's world.​All three of these "fallacies" amount to one statement: "If incorrect dates are obtained, even rarely, the method must be thrown out entirely."​On Discordant DatesThe crux of the argument from a YEC perspective appears to hinge on discordant dates. Four U-Pb methods can yield four dates, and may be unique from a K-Ar age obtained from the same rock. To them, this seems suspect at worst and faulty at best. And from a laymen perspective this is somewhat reasonable. But the simple truth is that these methods are not measuring the same event, and were not intended to do so. K-Ar in this case measures the cooling time of the particular crystalline sample, while the U-Pb or Sm-ND methods are measuring the "whole-rock" isocron. Thus these dates SHOULD be discordant.At worst, discordant ages suggest that geology could be understood more thoroughly and perhaps aren't as precise as we might wish.Occasionally (of the hundreds of thousands of tests) discordant dates have occurred that have not been understood. That is, we cannot readily attribute them to human error or known anomaly. This should grant YEC's little solace however, as almost invariably these dates are millions too billions of years old even in their discordancy.There has, to my knowledge and research, never been a rock body which has yielded a date in the millions and a date under 6000 years. They are almost invariably ALL ancient.Complaints notwithstanding, YEC's ignore the fact that concordant dates make up the vast majority of samples tested. Meteorites of iron and stone, individual or clustered and from all over the globe have been dated with Rb-Sr, Pb-Pb, Lu-Hf, Re-Os, Ar/Ar and EVERY kind of isochron and have ALL yielded dates of 4.4-4.6 billion years.Or consider the terrestrial samples. Here are the dates given by various methods for the Isue Greenstone Belt in Western Greenland on varying rock types in a sing;e location:

U-Pb and Rb-Sr : 3.66-3.77 billion yearsSm-Nd: 3.74 billion yearsPb-Pb: 3.81 billion yearsU-Pb and Pb-Pb: 3.70 billion years​You should see this and get the idea that this rock formation as a whole was probably completely formed around 3.7 billion years ago!Corroborated by other methodsThe rock dates using varying elements corroborate one another, but in addition to this they are ALSO matched up against Ice cores, dendochronology and ancient coral reefs. Here, they match as well.Or perhaps we can look at how the movement of plate tectonics match as well!We can also look at:The Oklo ReactorThe Galapagos BottleneckThe Holocene Oak Chronology

Closing Thoughts and TL;DRRadiometric Dating has withstood immense scrutiny due to it's implications and has come out on top each and every time. It has proven itself, via basics laws in Physics, to be an accurate means of determining the age of rock (and thus our world) and is a very succinct means to deny YEC as a hypothesis. ​